The Impact of COVID-19 on NEETs in Thailand between 2019-2021

Abstract

With the completely aged society, Thailand requires young people more than ever since the young people of today are the future of tomorrow. Nonetheless, young people in Thailand currently face a painful transition for young people into an active workforce, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 1.3 million youths or 14 percent of the youth population aged 15-24 years are not in Education, Employment, or Training (NEET). Hence, the study aims to understand the characteristics of NEETs and the impact of COVID-19 on NEETs in Thailand. The “NEET” term is more than unemployment and inactiveness. The rooted causes of being NEETs came from various factors and some can be analysed from social demographic factors. Binary Logistic Regression is utilized to analyse the relationship between social demographic variables and the probability of being NEETs between 2019 and 2021, categorizing in three periods: pre-COVID-19, during COVID-19, and recovery period. The social demographic variables consist of gender, age group, region, education level, household status, and marital status. Most variables share a positive relationship with the probability of being NEETs except region and household variables. The result reveals that youth living in Bangkok and being the household head reduce the odds of being NEETs. Even though the overall probability of being NEETs barely changed between 2019 and 2021, it does not mean that COVID-19 does not impact young people. Since the descriptive statistics indicate the number of unemployed youths rose over 40 percent during the period while the number of employed youths and youth in education hardly changed. Based on the result, the government should implement active labour market policies continuously to foster youth employability and profile the NEET population to establish database for providing more effective support.